
January 6, 2021
Matt Mullenweg: Collaboration Is Key (#100) | The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish
Check out the The Knowledge Project Podcast Page & Episode Notes
Key Takeaways
- “Open-source is a hack that gets competitors to work together” Matt Mullenweg
- Humans outcompeted all other animals because they could collaborate
- That’s why in the long run, open-source software will win every market that’s in
- With open-source software, you get the opposite of the tragedy of the commons
- Each person working in his self-interest makes the thing better
- Working together in person gets people closer, in a way that you can’t replicate online
- Knowing that this is an issue you have to actively invest to improve relationships with co-workers
- Automattic’s “Secret Sauce” is to get people to get together in-person 3-4 times annually
- “Make reversible decisions quickly and irreversible ones deliberately” Tony Schneider (early business partner)
- If it’s a reversible one you’ll learn a lot more by doing it, rather than debating it for weeks
- Matt never wanted Automattic to take over the market for WordPress paid services
- You have to capture enough, but always less than the value you create for others
- “It’s very difficult to drive World-changing performance if it’s just for a paycheck, or just for your personal benefit, you need to be connected to something larger” Matt Mullenweg
Key Products Mentioned
- Nonviolent Communication by Marshall B. Rosenberg was game-changing to Matt’s communication style
- The best framework Matt found on improving performance is from Dan Pink’s book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
- Farnam Street’s Great Mental Models books were sponsored by Automattic
- Books that influenced Matt’s thinking on mental models
- Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
- Principles by Ray Dalio
Intro
- Matt Mullenweg (@photomatt) is the co-founder of WordPress, the open platform that runs most websites, and the CEO of Automattic
- Check out Matt’s website
- Host: Shane Parrish (@ShaneAParrish)
- In this chat, Matt discusses his philosophy about open-source software, company organization, collective decision-making, and much more
WordPress’ Success
- At the start, WordPress’ competitors were better positioned to take over the internet
- They were better funded, had more talent, etc…
- Matt ascribes WordPress’ success to
- Creating a community
- People loved working on it
- Adaptability
- WordPress could be customized for every use
- Strong company philosophy
- Open-source
- To Matt, the open-source philosophy is the most important idea that he has been exposed to
- Creating a community
Open-source Philosophy
- “Open-source is like software with a bill of rights attached” Matt Mullenweg
- The bill of rights ensures certain freedoms
- Open-source Software has four freedoms attached
- Freedom to use the software for any purpose
- Freedom to see how the software works (look under the hood)
- Freedom to modify the software
- Freedom to distribute those changes
- This makes open-source software win in the long run
- Different versions will be available and the best ones will survive
- What makes people want to work on open-source projects?
- Part of the other freedoms involved is the freedom to sell it or commercialize it
- You could take WordPress and sell it
- Companies like Bluehost and GoDaddy do this
- Part of the other freedoms involved is the freedom to sell it or commercialize it
- There are different business models that can be used with open-source software
- If you put your best features into a paid software, the open-source, free one is likely to die
- WordPress’ approach is to put its best features in a core, free offering
- Then they create paid services around it (example of Akismet)
- “Open-source is a hack that gets competitors to work together” Matt Mullenweg
- Humans outcompeted all other animals because they were able to collaborate
- That’s why in the long run, open-source software will win every market that’s in
- With open-source software, you get the opposite of the tragedy of the commons
- Each person working in his self-interest makes the thing better
Automattic’s Philosophy to Capture Value
- Automattic is a for-profit company created to build on and flourish from the open web
- Matt’s idea was to pair his non-profit (WordPress.org) with a for-profit company in a way that strengthened both companies
- Automattic creates paid services for WordPress.org
- WooCommerce
- WordPress.com
- Matt never wanted Automattic to take over the market for WordPress paid services
- He wanted to maintain a thriving ecosystem of strong companies creating services for WordPress
- If you’re capturing more value than you create, you’ll inevitably die
- If you’re not capturing enough value you’ll inevitably die
- You have to capture enough, but always less than the value you create for others
- Matt was inspired in this idea by Microsoft, which stated that for every dollar they make, $20 are made by the Microsoft ecosystem
- He saw that all successful ecosystems had this ratio of $1 made for every $20 created
- He considers Facebook as a “fake platform”, as Facebook makes 90% of the revenues in its ecosystem
- He saw that all successful ecosystems had this ratio of $1 made for every $20 created
Environment, Performance
- Your environment is the most important thing affecting how you work
- The smells, music, light, everything contributes to your mental state while you work
- WordPress pays a lot of attention to the environment it creates
- The best framework Matt found on improving performance is from Dan Pink’s book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
- Mastery: Getting good at what you do by being challenged
- Autonomy: Freedom to be able to do what you think is right
- Purpose: Working for something bigger than yourself
- “It’s very difficult to drive World-changing performance if it’s just for a paycheck, or just for your personal benefit, you need to be connected to something larger” Matt Mullenweg
Words Create Reality: Remote vs Distributed
- Matt is aware of the strong power of the words we use in our reality
- The way you name initially is really important
- Changing names after that is really difficult
- Automattic is a remote company, but Matt doesn’t call it “remote”, he calls it “distributed”
- Remote implies that you are far from the center
- A “remote town” is isolated, far away
- Remote implies that you are far from the center
- Matt’s idea is to create an antifragile, fully distributed organization
- Each node in the network has equal weight to others
- The system becomes more resilient because each node is relatively independent but contributes to the whole
- Automattic’s philosophy for its distributed team is to leave lots of freedom to its employees
- Other benefits of distributed teams
- It’s easier to slack off in an office than it is remotely
- In offices there’s a lot more signaling, you can hide behind constant meetings, etc.
- Offices are also very distracting
- Humans are social animals and in-person they get caught up in social games that distract them from work
- It’s easier to slack off in an office than it is remotely
The Levels of Autonomous Organizations
- The levels of how companies evolve to become fully distributed
- Level 0: Jobs that absolutely can’t be done remotely (construction workers)
- We are finding that many jobs that we thought to be Level 0 are not (telemedicine)
- Level 1: You can get by not working in the office for emergencies
- The company is not designed to allow distributed work
- Level 2: You try to re-create everything you did in the office online
- Most companies went to this level during the pandemic
- Usually exhausting for employees
- Too many online meetings
- Most companies went to this level during the pandemic
- Level 3: When you start to embrace the benefits of being online
- Example of using a common Google Doc to take notes during a meeting
- Helps to make sure that everyone is on the same page
- Example of using a common Google Doc to take notes during a meeting
- Level 4: Move from synchronous to asynchronous
- People can work together without having to work at the same time
- This unlocks major benefits
- Access to global talent
- Give people far more flexibility
- Better decision making (people have more time to think)
- Empower introverted employees, who are less capable to bring their best ideas in meetings
- Level 5: The somewhat unattainable goal to aspire to
- When the distributed organization outperforms in-person organizations under every aspect (productivity, happiness, etc…)
Downsides to Distributed, Investing in Relationships
- Matt really enjoys spending time with his colleagues
- He wishes he could do that more
- Working together in person gets people closer, in a way that you can’t replicate online
- Knowing that this is an issue you have to actively invest to improve relationships with coworkers
- When people invest in improving their relationship, the effects multiply on the company and product
- Automattic’s “Secret Sauce” is to get people to get together in-person 3-4 times annually
- Knowing that this is an issue you have to actively invest to improve relationships with coworkers
- Overworking is also often a problem in distributed teams
- Automattic used to not track vacation time, but people weren’t taking enough
- Now they started tracking it again to encourage employees to take more
Mental Models and Decision Making
- “Make reversible decisions quickly and irreversible ones deliberately” Tony Schneider (early business partner)
- If it’s a reversible one you’ll learn a lot more by doing it, rather than debating it for weeks
- Speed of iteration in software is essential
- You could argue that every decision is reversible, but some of them require really high costs to be reversed
- Those are the decisions you should be more deliberate about
- Who you choose to partner with, acquisitions, important hires
- Some amount of editing will inevitably improve your writing
- Similarly, important decisions can be improved by approaching them more deliberately
- If it’s a reversible one you’ll learn a lot more by doing it, rather than debating it for weeks
- In organizations, everyone should be able to challenge other’s ideas
- You should be able to argue against your idea even better than the person challenging it
- Matt likes Farnam Street’s article on this: The Work Required to Have an Opinion
- Books that influenced Matt Mullenweg’s thinking on mental models
- Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
- Dan Ariely’s books on Behavioral Economics
- Principles by Ray Dalio
- Matt avoids being too prescriptive
- He hopes he can find better ways to do things with time
- He thinks Shane should interview people at different points in time to see how their ideas changed
Distributed Decision Making
- Instead of making decisions in a meeting, at Automattic they create written threads for people to share their ideas and thoughts
- These threads become like a decision journal, allowing to identify flaws in their thinking and processes
- This can sometimes spiral out of control, but overall it works well for them
- Automattic took direct steps to optimize this process
- They hire people who can write clearly and succinctly
- Clear writing represents clear thinking
- If a thread is too long, someone will summarize it to help everyone catch up
- Matt thinks a lot about time efficiency
- They hire people who can write clearly and succinctly
- Automattic has 80% fewer meetings than most companies
- This makes it very easy to arrange an important meeting when there is an emergency
Automattic’s Org Structure
- Automattic today has 13,000 employees
- Matt designed the organizational structure to be fractal
- As you zoom in or out, the structure looks similar
- As teams grow, they split into two and starts coordinating
- The hardest growth phase was going from 20 to 50
- In this phase, you lose the ability to “force” collaboration
- You need to have a good process to onboard new people effectively
- The company experienced a lot of internal issues among employees
- Early on Matt was influenced by Basecamp’s philosophy to keep the company small
- He used to think that larger organizations would necessarily be worse
- That caused people to be overworked for some time
- Today he sees that as a limiting belief
- Why can’t the company get better if you bring in more great people?
- He used to think that larger organizations would necessarily be worse
What Matt Learned Working with a Coach
- He found subtle, but powerful ways to improve his communication
- Instead of asking “Is there anything I can do to help you”?
- He now asks “What do you need for this to be a success?”
- The first question implicitly gives power to Matt, the second empowers the other
- He started listening more to his body, with awareness
- In the past, he used to try to only rationalize and solve problems intellectually
- We’re often taught to suppress negative emotions, but this makes them come back
- Identifying and allowing negative feelings allows them to go away instead of affecting you
- This affects the relationships you have and your decision-making
- Feeling emotions also allows access to some “unverbalizable” wisdom in the body
- In the past, he used to try to only rationalize and solve problems intellectually
Additional Notes
- Matt divides his time into three buckets
- Taking care of people
- Taking care of the product
- Extra time to deal with emergencies that arise